education

Announcing: SFL Back To School Week

22 Comments

Since kids are going back to school and Fundy U’s across the nation are gearing up to start the new semester, I thought it only fitting that we take a few days here on SFL to dig into fundamentalist education and schooling. I’ve already done an entire week specifically on college but this time around I’d like to look at the entire system more holistically from start to finish.

We’ll begin at the beginning…

22 thoughts on “Announcing: SFL Back To School Week”

  2. Ah yes. Go FHS!!! Where we were pants to play basketball, culottes to play volleyball, and we don’t even try to play other sports, because our parents have spent too much buying our volleyball and basketball uniforms. Go Eagles!

  3. I love that this post showed up in google reader with a Sarah Palin ad attached. That really is the perfect start to my day.

  4. I never went to a fundy school. I’m thankful for my non-fundy dad, who made sure I stayed in public school.

    I wonder where I’d be if I’d gone to one of their schools, rather than being taught to think for myself.

  5. My mother taught elementary at the small Christian school I attended for 20 years. Every one who was ever in her class at least a quarter can read and write.

    This is generally true for most fundy schools. It’s too bad Fundy high schools are run by wannabe pastors who have no idea how to teach (ironic, isn’t it 😎 ). Look at the grade-by-grade comparison of Christian schools and public schools on standardized tests. In elementary school fundy students are way ahead because of the small class size and individual attention the students receive. In junior high they start to level off and by 12th grade, the average public school student is even or ahead of the fundy school student because of more educational opportunities available and the professional staff.

    1. We actually lived this. Our kids got very good elementary education in fundy school, especially in language, reading and writing. However, seventh grade for our oldest child was a total waste of time. (I’ve considered asking for my money back.) We moved them for middle and high school and found that the AP/Honors classes, science labs, trained math teachers at the public school have truly been a blessing. Math and science teachers at the fundy middle/high school are pastors or fundy bible school trained lay people. There are no real science labs in the fundy school, just a room filled with “hand me down” microscopes etc. And, lo and behold, they haven’t turned to the dark side now that they attend public school.

    2. Not all Christian schools are academically deficient, although they are looked on with suspicion of being so by the “authorities”. My school, which I attended Gr1-12, was limited by size, but we were well ahead of most public schools. Which may be more a criticism of the public system where I am… We used A Beka throughout elementary, then used the government curriculum for 7-12 as required by law. My school had fully certified teachers who really knew what they were doing, only a few wannabes, mostly teaching Bible class. We also have a nearby Christian university with a fairly full curriculum, not just Bible studies – they had a program for seniors where we’d spend a week at the university taking a chem/bio lab course – it was for Christian and home-schooled kids, so we would have an idea of labs before university.
      All that said in favour of my school, there were several ways in which public schools were better. One, if you didn’t want a college prep program, public school was your only option because we were all college prep. Second and more important, if you had discipline problems or learning difficulties, public school was the better option. Many parents sent kids with these issues to our school for the low student-teacher ratio, but public school was where there were resources to actually help them.

    3. I will certainly never say fundy school isn’t full of major defects especially paying so much attention to minor infractions and dress code etc. But I also will never give a blanket statement that public schools, just by not being fundy schools automatically give a better education. Let’s just say I didn’t learn much in public school but being of a decent intelligence level I got pushed through. I learned a lot when I homeschooled my oldest child, stuff I NEVER remember hearing about in public school. I think judgements about schools should be made by a school by school basis, and then there is the motivation or lack there of of each student. Most of the posters here are sharp and do not make blanket, throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater statements but sometimes many do, such as coments insinuating that all homeschoolers homeschool because of fundy leanings or all people who don’t watch tv are brainwashed by fundyism, actually many christians just chose to do those things after thinking them out for themselves and it has nothing to do with fundyism.

  7. Woodland Christian School, a Mothership wanna be.
    http://wbcseagles.org/

    Located approx. halfway between the mothership indoctrination facility and the indoctrination facility near the Christian Flag controversy.

  8. Calvary Baptist Christian School, King, NC Home of the Christian Flag controversy.
    http://www.calvarychristianschool.org/homepage.mgi

    Keep following this line North East to Mayberry, NC the epicenter of Rural Fundiedom for the Applichian region(aka Mt. Airy, NC home of Andy Griffith) and home to the likes of the Blue Ridge Camp meeting where they love Sammy Allen and Dr. Phil Kidd.

    1. dang george, let me drive before you get us lost. From Winston-Salem it’s northwest to Mt Airy.

  10. My Alma-matter, which would be considered a fully compromised liberal institution by the likes of a lot of the cast of characters here, does deserve to get mentioned nevertheless. Why? Complete fundy-style financial mismanagement, the kind that gets the attention of the big-city newspaper:
    http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/82527527.html

    As for myself, I dropped my kid off for his first full day at a school that knows the difference between law and gospel. I suspect that one of the reasons attendance is dropping off for a lot of these schools is because kids like us know the score, versus our baby boomer parents, who just wanted to give us something better than their heathen public school education.

  11. I think I need to separate from this blog because, as we all know, real Christian schools don’t start until the day after Labor Day–and we need to keep to the old paths and remove not the ancient landmarks. Amen? 🙂

    1. Yeah, ’cause all them youngins need to be in the fields harvesting.

      It’s funny how traditions that have no relevant use in our society get carried over to today.

      1. I had a wonderful summer with my kids and I would hate it if they had to go to school year round with small breaks throughout! Give my kids and I a big hunk of summer every year! That’s the way uh huh uh huh, I like it uh huh, uh. 😀

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